


Last Man Standing

by fabrega



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-19
Updated: 2013-11-19
Packaged: 2018-01-02 01:10:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1050740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fabrega/pseuds/fabrega
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once, a long time ago, Stacker Pentecost had said to him: "We didn't join the jaeger program thinking we'd never lose anyone we cared about." It's a thing Herc Hansen knows true, but he has never been good at mourning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last Man Standing

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Alex, for the initial read and the encouragement.

Herc has never been good at mourning--wasn't when his folks passed, wasn't when he lost Angela, and certainly isn't now. This one is big, a mountain of grief sat directly in the middle of his brain, taking up all the space that should be filled with the celebration of their victory and everything that victory entails. He edges around the grief in his head for as long as he can, celebrating into the night with the crew ( _his_ crew now, a strange feeling) and briefing the people who'd tried to cancel the program ( _his_ program now, even stranger) and beginning the teardown that was really supposed to have happened months ago. There is a hole in his heart, though, and a silence in his head, and one day he drops into a chair in the mostly packed-up control room--just for a second, he's tired, so _tired_ , and he can't figure out why--and Max flops down next to him, facing the entrance expectantly, waiting for someone who's never coming back, and suddenly his head is in his free hand, tears escaping between his fingers.

He doesn't see the looks the crew around him exchange over his head. He is vaguely aware of the noise around him subsiding and of Max nudging at his leg. He knows, somewhere in the back of his head, that he is a grown man and a PPDC Ranger and the Marshall of this place and that sobbing like an injured child is, at the very least, something that is best done in the privacy of your own bunk, but he can't stop, his heart will burst with sadness before he is able to stop.

After what seems like ages, there is a tentative touch on his arm, and an obviously-uncomfortable voice says, "Marshall Hansen?"

He forces himself to take a deep breath and looks up to find Raleigh Becket standing at his side. Mako Mori is standing behind Raleigh; she has Max's leash in her hands and is staring hard at the dog, trying not to look at Herc, not wanting to add to his embarrassment by doing something so simple as directly witnessing it. The room is otherwise empty.

"Sir," Raleigh says, his face concerned, "Are you okay?"

Once, a long time ago, Stacker Pentecost had said to him: "We didn't join the jaeger program thinking we'd never lose anyone we cared about." The moment, his words, his delivery, the set of his jaw and the far-off look in his eyes--they'd all played over and over again for him in the drift. It was a thing he knew was true, had taken into the core of him. The odds hadn't been in their favor, not for a long while. He'd been prepared to lose, but apparently in the most selfish way: he'd been prepared to lose _his own_ life, prepared to sacrifice his life to save his country and his world and the people he cared about. 

He hadn't thought about what would happen to his son, had assumed they'd both go down fighting, together.

He'd tried even harder not to think about how his death might affect the rest of the people he cared about.

"Sir?" Raleigh repeats.

"Why are you two here?" Herc asks, his eyes upward, willing some self-composure. He means _why are you here, now, in this room with me_ ; it comes out sounding like _why are you here, in the grand scheme of things, when the pilots of Striker Eureka are not_.

Raleigh purses his lips, and his jaw works for a second before he answers. He responds to the question Herc had intended: "You startled the crew, sir. They asked that someone come talk to you."

Mako looks up at him now. "We've all lost someone, Marshall. You don't need to grieve alone unless you want to," she says.

"...except, either way, you can't do it here." Raleigh looks a little sheepish. "They'd really like to finish the teardown today, if that's okay with you."

He wipes an arm across his eyes, takes another deep breath, and climbs to his feet. They're right, of course, as he's known all along--this is not the time or the place for this kind of breakdown. Then again, in a good and just world, this feeling wouldn't exist at all. "Well then, where should I go?"

The jaeger bays in the Shatterdome proper are big and empty. There are no more jaegers left to fill them and no need to build replacements; the lack echoes in them, quiet and strange. It is easy enough for Raleigh and Mako to convince any loiterers to give them some space. Herc stands at the foot of the bay that used to hold his jaeger and stares up, up, up. He wonders what it was like, that final drift in his jaeger. He knows why the Marshall was confident of the drift with his kid; he wonders what each of them saw, what kind of father he looked like to Stacker Pentecost, what kind of man he looked like to Chuck Hansen.

-~-

Chuck doesn't look like he's quite finished shouting about Gipsy Danger's aborted test run today, but he storms out of the Marshall's quarters anyway. Herc looks out the open door after him, holds his own rage down enough to scowl instead of shouting back, then closes the door and turns back to Stacker Pentecost. "I'm sorry," Herc says, "He shouldn't talk to you like that."

And Stacker, who has a thousand things on his plate, whose daughter just nearly blew up the Shatterdome, who expends so much energy attempting to control this madhouse, a fixed point as the storm rages around him--Stacker lets his guard down for a moment, offers Herc a tired, knowing smile. "Really, I wonder where he learned it."

Herc looks down, looks back up, smiling sheepishly. "No idea."

(He sometimes wonders, but is too afraid to ask, what Chuck thinks of...this. More often, he worries about the chunk of intermingled resentment and rock-star jaeger pilot ego he feels in Chuck's head in the drift, wonders if his son's drive to do so well and be so vocal about it is pushback against the assumption that Striker Eureka was theirs in the first place because his old man is the Marshall's favorite, like he has to prove his worth against an accusation he's afraid someone is going to make.)

"No matter his delivery, though, Chuck's right," Stacker says, sighing. "The two of them in the same jaeger are a liability." He looks drained; Herc knows how important this was to him.

"What other options do we have? This thing is a long-shot with four jaegers, even worse with just three."

"There are other pilots," Stacker says.

"Ones with battle experience?" Herc counters.

"You know that there are." Stacker's face is serious, and Herc doesn't have to say _you know that will kill you_ , because he's sure it's written all over his face. "If that's what it takes," the Marshall continues, "That's what it takes. We didn't join the jaeger program expecting never to lose--"

Both men look up at the sound of a fight occurring in the hallway just outside. Herc storms out to break it up, already knowing exactly what's going on. He shoots Stacker a look that says _we'll finish that discussion later_.

They never do.

As the Marshall calls Raleigh and Mako into his quarters, Herc drags his kid down the hallway, embarrassed for all of them. When they are back at their own quarters, Chuck tears away from him, fuming at his father. Herc just shakes his head. "Go on; tell me how you had him right where you wanted him."

Chuck snorts. "Laugh all you want, old man. It won't be so funny when those two screw-ups and their walking scrap-metal disaster are the only thing standing between us and some ugly bastard on the ocean floor."

Herc looks at his son and feels a mingling of annoyance and despair and affection. Raleigh is probably right; Chuck could use a kick in the arse. But Herc looks at the angry young man and sees his own failings--as a parent, as a role model, as anything close to a friend. In Chuck's face, he sees flashes of the wife he lost to a kaiju attack, of the brother he lost to his own moral code. He sees a problem he doesn't know how to fix, a person he doesn't know outside of the drift. He's not sure how to reconcile those all into a son.

He thinks to himself: _just once, I'd like to feel like I have control over something in my life_.

That's a feeling that only gets worse.

-~-

Raleigh's voice drags him out of his thoughts and back into the Shatterdome. Herc is aware that the other man is speaking, but can't make the sounds resolve themselves into words. "What?" he asks, his voice a little husky. His eyes are misty again.

Raleigh's gaze slides over to Mako nervously before he repeats, "He died a hero, sir. We're all here because of him."

"You should be proud of him, Marshall," Mako adds quietly.

And Herc is still caught up in his thoughts just enough that at first he doesn't know which of the people he's grieving for they mean.


End file.
